The Red Market: On the Trail of the World's Organ Brokers, Bone Thieves, Blood Farmers, and Child Traffickers Reviews

DianeJun 10, 2015

This topic was so grim that I couldn't finish this book. It is well-written and the author traveled around the world to report on this story, so if you are interested in the global sale of human bodies and body parts, you will probably like this book.
First Paragraph
"I weight just...

AnaJul 31, 2011

I had really high hopes for this book. It seemed like just my sort of thing, dealing with the macabre but in a serious way. No vampires and zombies for me ;o)
But although I learned quite a bit about the world market of humans - parts and otherwise - the book left me a bit befuddled...

Grave-robbing, modern day vampires, kidnappings, a poor village full of women who have sold their spare kidneys to pay the bills, an island nation where young, poor women come to sell their eggs. It comes as a relief by the time The Red Market: On the Trail of the World's Organ Brokers...

S'hiNov 02, 2011

Scott Carney does a remarkable job in presenting us with issues which would be difficult to contemplate by describing his own introduction and experience in this field. By bringing us through the personal situations we are given a means to confront realities which show how our ethics f...

KaetheMay 11, 2011

I wouldn't call it a fun read, not like Mary Roach's Stiff, but it is significant. Someone has to think about where bodies and their parts come from, and how best to limit coercion. And really, as long as there is money to be made, from selling blood, from international adoption fees, ...

EmilySep 30, 2013

Review originally posted http://nonfictionbookclubmississauga....
Scott Carney?s 2011 book, The Red Market: On the Trail of the World's Organ Brokers, Bone Thieves, Blood Farmers, and Child Traffickers, is not a book for the squeamish or for the faint of heart. If you can g...

Will ByrnesMay 11, 2011

How can I sell thee? Let me count the ways. Actually, I don?t need to. In The Red Market investigative journalist Scott Carney seems to have taken care of that. He covers the wealth of ways in which business people in the people business sell parts of people to other people. He cover...

AmiFeb 28, 2017

What an intense and, at times, gruesome read. The concept of the "red market" and the lives that it ruins feels like such an important topic, and yet it is so rarely discussed. I think because so much of the negative consequences occur outside of the United States and Western Europe th...

Paquita Maria SanchezJun 23, 2015

Man, I'm glad I was just barely too old to donate my eggs for money that one time I thought about donating my eggs for money. Man, I'm glad I didn't die when I did that clinical trial. For money. (I know it should've been obvious that those things could be dangerous, but jeez, those th...

MoiraAug 03, 2011

Carney explores what he has dubbed "the red market": the black market of human tissue, including organs, blood, hair, eggs, etc.
I picked this book up after hearing an interview with the author on NPR, and I couldn't wait to read it. Ultimately, however, I was disappointed in Carne...

PeacegalSep 26, 2017

The global medical marketplace is examined in this approachable and important book. Carney takes us on a tour of the many sources of human raw materials, ranging from humorous (India's bizarre hair markets will weird out wig wearers) to the nightmarish (grave robberies, kidnappings).
...

Allison Jun 28, 2011

This was incredibly interesting and fantastically written for laymen to follow. For a work with this much jargon and terminology the story galloped along at a breakneck pace pulling me with it. The horrific results of Carney's investigation should not be ignored. While the vast majorit...

KateNov 01, 2011

The captions on the pictures are the perfect abstracts for each chapter. Stick to the captions.
At times this book seemed more like one travelogue of a fucked up world; other times it was more like a series of blog posts (specifically - it was a few ideas jotted down that serve to s...

CarolineOct 25, 2011

This is a market that nobody really talks about, is not fully regulated and is highly profitable for everyone except the donors. While the author concentrates on the market for whole skeletons, fresh organs, blood and young children and babies in India, he does mention that there are o...

KathleenJun 27, 2011

This book made me rethink the process of organ donation...not that I would not be an organ donor, because I still plan to donate my entire cadaver upon death. But the author addresses the HUGE problem of international poverty and its effect on WHO is worth WHAT and how the west's insat...

AndrewAug 13, 2011

They sprung the lock and revealed a medical ward fit for a horror movie. IV drips hung from makeshift poles and patients moaned as if they were recovering from a delirium. Five emaciated men lying on small woven cots could barely lift their heads to acknowledge the visitors. The sticky...

Nate ClarkNov 29, 2017

An interesting read, especially on the cusp of donating my kidney. This book is non fiction, but at times reads like an adventure. The author goes to great lengths to interview smugglers of organs, and traffickers of children. It is at times, sad, disheartening, but is eye opening to t...

Ramsey HootmanOct 28, 2013

This is essentially a polemic against anonymous donation of anything - blood, organs, children. For my part, Carney's convinced me. I didn't have a strong opinion one way or another... in fact, the only topic I've ever really thought about here is international adoption. But I do appro...

RoseJul 31, 2011

An interesting and well written read- but I'm a macabre person, and I wanted a couple more chapters. The author keeps it more PC than the title would suggest. ...

GregFeb 04, 2013

I went into this knowing it would be interesting but wow. Scott Carney is a great writer, but most importantly The Red Market is an amazing piece of journalism. Exposing the very different ways that value is placed on the many different parts of the human body that the world needs, the...

SarahSep 01, 2017

This book is chilling. I had a hard time sleeping because I always tend to read books before bed... The fact this was nonfiction made it so much worse. I became interested in this because of the Unwind dystology series, and oh boy this book delivers. I'm definitely going to be watching...

HarperJan 26, 2014

By the end of the introductory chapter I knew this wasn't going to be the book I hoped it would be, but I decided to stick it out anyway. The author had made it clear that he would be focusing more on the impact this "red market" makes on the people it takes advantage of (which it does...

Jordan DennisAug 15, 2013

I picked this up after hearing Carney as part of Radiolab's excellent episode, "Blood." Their discussion of the buying and selling of donated blood here in the States fascinated me, so I thought I'd pick this up for some further reading. I'm familiar with some of the topics addressed i...

MalynneAug 24, 2014

If I were walking through the aisles of a bookstore and spotted this, I can guarantee that this is not a topic I would have been particularly interested in. My grandma ordered The Red Market online and, without much else to do, I picked it up and started reading it. I could not put it ...

LAPL ReadsJan 29, 2014

In this harrowing, eye-opening account, investigative journalist Scott Carney goes inside the multi-billion dollar industry of human bodies, and studies the international market for organs, bones, genetic material, and even live human beings. As readers learn about murky international ...

StephenJul 20, 2016

Scott Carney travels the world (and by "the world" I mean "India") to discover the dark side of the red market, the trade in human body parts. Whether it's blood for transfusions during/after surgery, kidneys for replacements, or female eggs for in vitro fertilization, for every heart-...

Adam GoldenMar 18, 2018

(4/5?)
In The Red Market, journalist Scott Carney travels around the world attempting to shed light on the suspicious anonymity and covert operations that fuel what is know as "The Red Market". Ever wonder where that human skeleton in your biology class originated from? Or why there...

Ariadna73Jan 26, 2012

08-06-2011: It only took a few hours for me to devour this very interesting book. It has so many truths I didn't want (and I think nobody wants) to muse about that I just tried to read as fast as I could so I could process its contents and make them part of that really hidden part of m...

Nat00mbtMay 10, 2014

I have a deep respect for the author and years of hard work and research he put into writing this book. It opens a discussion for several huge ethical problems of the , modern medicine. Scott Carney says that our moral obligation is that we often should embrace and accept the fate bein...

Readers Also Enjoyed

Welcome Guest

Please create a free account to access unlimited downloads & reading.

Read Books, Magazines & Comics & many more directly on your browser or download on PC or Tablet!

Download at full speed with unlimited bandwidth with just one click!

New Books, Magazines & Comics added every day!

Fully optimized for all platforms - no additional software required !

Get Access to more than 10 million Books, Magazines & Comics for FREE!

Experience all the content you could possibly want from comprehensive library of timeless classics and new releases.

Create Free Account & start reading

We value your privacy. We will not sell or rent your email address to third parties. See our Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy for more details.

About the author

Scott Carney

Scott Carney is an investigative journalist and anthropologist whose stories blend narrative non-fiction with ethnography. He has been a contributing editor at Wired and his work also appears in Mother Jones, Foreign Policy, Playboy, Details, Discover, Outside, and Fast Company. He regularly appears on variety of radio and television stations from NPR to National Geographic TV. In 2010 he won the Payne Award for Ethics in Journalism for the story Meet the Parents which tracked an international kidnapping-to-adoption ring . His first book, The Red Market: On the Trail of the Worlds Organ Brokers, Bone Thieves, Blood Farmers and Child Traffickers was published by William Morrow in 2011 and won the 2012 Clarion Award for best non-fiction book. He first traveled to India while he was a student at Kenyon College in 1998 and over the course of several years inside and outside the classroom he learned Hindi. In 2004 he received a MA in anthropology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. All told, he has spent more than half a decade in South Asia. He lives in Long Beach, CA.